By Luaine Lee
Knight Ridder Newspapers

HOLLYWOOD — When actor Michael Weatherly was 12 years old, his parents sent him to Camp Challenge. His mother wanted to toughen him up, he says.

“It was a three-week duration, and I had to canoe, fight, build my own ax, learn to read a topographic map, compass, and we had something called ‘24-hour survival’ where they left us in the woods alone for 24 hours and you had to find food, build a lean-to. That changed me. It either changed me or it broke me,” he says.

“But when I showed up (at camp), I was wearing a white turtleneck and white bell-bottoms. And I was from Connecticut and playing tennis at the country club. When I came back, I was wearing hiking boots and blue jeans, and I’d spent some time with some interesting people,” he says.

It was a good move in more ways than one. Now, as the wiseacre Tony DiNozzo on CBS’ “NCIS” (8 p.m. Tuesdays on WISH ), Weatherly, 36, has to combine those skills with his impish sense of humor and considerable acting talent.

Enjoys ‘rebel’ role

“He’s a federal agent, but he has very little regard for toeing the line of political correctness or anything like that,” he says. “I love playing somebody who was kind of a rebel without a cause.”

Weatherly’s son, 8-year-old August, is with him for a Sunday-morning breakfast. The two plan a secret outing after Weatherly is done, and it’s clear August enjoys his father’s company, even if it does mean sitting still in a restaurant booth for an hour.

Weatherly, who played Logan on “Dark Angel” and the evil ex-husband on “Jesse,” broke family tradition when he became an actor. And while he underplays it, the subversive move probably was more costly than he admits.

“I grew up in Connecticut, went to an all-boys school and then went away to boarding school. . . .” he says.

“So I grew up in a very narrow world. . . . I felt that I didn’t know enough about the world at large, and I’m a people-watcher. I love to do that. I wanted to learn about other people. And so it’s my endless fascination with what makes people tick.”

His, hers and ours family

Weatherly’s parents, each of whom married three times, divorced when he was 15. He has a brother, William, and a pack of half- and stepsiblings.

His father, who is the exclusive importer and distributor of the Swiss Army knife, wasn’t pleased when Weatherly told him he wanted to quit college in his senior year.

So when Weatherly blew off political science for prime time, he was on his own.

Glancing at August, he says, “This is probably not a great thing for future generations, but I didn’t want to have a safety net. I thought, ‘If I have a safety net, I’ll get a job in advertising or something and I won’t feel as motivated.’ “

There were some struggling years, but Weatherly managed to cop a Snickers commercial and eventually wound up on daytime’s “Loving,” where he worked with his ex-wife, actress Amelia Heinle.

He wouldn’t mind marrying again, he says, and is dating a woman who works in the pharmaceutical industry and doesn’t live in California. He also dated Rachel Hunter and Jessica Alba.

“I heard a great thing . . . about men and women. There are gardeners and there are flowers. You can have a gardener and a flower. You can have a gardener and a gardener — might be a little boring, but they’re working hard. But if you have two flowers, nobody’s taking care of the garden. Actors have a tendency to be flowers. So nobody’s minding the garden.”

Looking at August, he adds, “When I’m hanging out with you, I’m sort of a gardener and you’re the flower. You bring out the gardener in me.”